It has long been an object of northern (as distinct from southern United States) nut growers to develop, by breeding and selection among cultivars, a pecan tree that would extend the range of good commercial pecan production further northward. In 1960, in an orchard near Neosho, Mo., I gathered nuts from a rather hardy tree of the variety of southern pecan tree known as "Moore", this variety of pecan being a well known variety that had been used for years as root stock for grafting commercial trees in nurseries in the South. In this orchard, there were several varieties of grafted pecan trees surrounding the "Moore". To get a grove of "Moore", I would graft from "Moore" trees. I planted three hundred selected nuts from this tree, these nuts having been randomly pollinated by other trees in this orchard. This planting was made in the spring of 1961. All pecans are Carya Illinoensis G.m.D.
In 1963, after a two year growing period, selected ones of these seedlings were transplanted by me into a plot at fifty foot spacing intervals, and in 1972, the eleventh growing season, these trees started bearing nuts. Late in the 1972 season, as I was driving along the row of seedling trees, I noticed that Tree No. 19 was far superior to the remaining stand of these trees, particularly in that the nuts appeared to be much larger and that the husks were actually curled up into a bell shape displaying the nuts which were much longer and larger than any other variety in the orchard where this Seedling No. 19 had been grown and matured.
In 1974, because of the superior characteristics of the No. 19 seedling, several grafting scions of that tree were grafted onto native pecan root stock. Most of these trees, that were grafted scions of No. 19, came into production during the years 1977 and 1978.
This new tree herein disclosed has been asexually reproduced by me since 1974 by grafting and budding, the present method of propagation being by both graft and budding and is done at Nevada, Mo., and it has been observed that the distinguishing characteristics of this new pecan variety hold true from generation to generation and appear to be firmly fixed.